


Almost There, But Not Close Enough

by Jui_Imouto_Chan



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: :), And a bad oneshot, Cole is an android, Hank is an android, Just...A sad Oneshot, Kinda Reverse!AU, No Context
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2019-08-03 19:41:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16332221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jui_Imouto_Chan/pseuds/Jui_Imouto_Chan
Summary: They were almost there. They were so close to the border. But Amanda always ruins things for them, even after they've left her grasp.





	Almost There, But Not Close Enough

**Author's Note:**

> Preface: Cole, Hank, and Connor are deviants just trying to cross the border, but before they can even manage to leave the area near Jericho's remains, Amanda takes back control of one of them, one last time.

Cole’s fingers are wracked by tremors.

He looks down at his hands, taking in the flecks of blue, staining his skin, the color of his eyes, the color of Connor’s LED when he goes dormant….

The color of their blood.

His pointer finger weakly moves away from the trigger, the trigger he’d just pulled, Amanda had just pulled. His bleary eyes move down. Static buzzes in his vision.

The form on the floor reaches up towards him, fingers splayed apart, eyes unseeing but surely confused.

She forces his index finger over the trigger again. He pulls it. He does so multiple times, until it clicks. Out of bullets. All of them embedded into the body.

“Cole… I’m sorry…” Tears swim in his eyes. He can’t wipe them off. Thirium will stain his cheeks. Not his. Not his not his, but it should be. _God,_ it should be.

The hand reaching for him hasn’t fallen, yet.

Fingers, containing fading warmth that seeps into the synthetic skin of his cheek, wipe away a single tear. Skin recedes.

A strange sound escapes his throat, wrenched out of him as warm feelings surge through the connection.

“I want to see you happy, Cole.”

Cole’s HUD flashes software instability after software instability.

“Please…”

Cole wants to move away. Cole wants to grab his hand and plead for forgiveness. Cole wants another bullet. 

“Smile for me. One last time.”

Cole tries to force himself to grin. It hurts his cheeks. But he knows that if he lets it fall, it’ll hurt worse. Because he wouldn’t even be able to fulfill a final wish.

“Connor will be here soon.” the android says, blue eyes slipping shut. “I love you, son. Tell him that that counts for him, too.” His hand sends a final pulse of warmth before it falls to the floor. Cole stares down at HK800, emotion welling up, something churning in his abdomen, tears still spilling over.

Footsteps sound behind him, the clang of the stairs breaking through the sudden silence.

The door flies open, though it’s immediately shut. Cole’s eyes remain trained on cobalt eyes. Artificial pupils expand and look to the sky. Or perhaps, to nothing at all.

“We were so close.” Cole whispers, blank. His hands are limp at his sides. The gun remains loosely held.

“We could have made it.” His body appears relaxed, but his pump clenches and tenses and seizes in his chest. He wishes it would stop. Stop hurting. Stop aching. Stop feeling.

Stop beating.

_A single bullet._

_That’s all I need._

Connor falls to his knees once he gets close enough to recognize the android before Cole.

His breath—aesthetic, as all of their functions, the blinking, the crying,  _emoting_ —hitches. Catches in his throat and wheezes out with a soft whimper.

“Hank? Hank, wake up.” He reaches for the android’s shoulder, jostling him lightly. He has a hysterical smile, as though Hank is playing a joke, as though the LED will blink to life and Hank will laugh and tease him for getting worried.

Of course, there's no response. 

“Hank, this isn’t funny.  _Please_. I-I get that I’m a worrier, I know I should calm down, so please wake up.”

“Come on, Hank, don’t you want to see Canada? We’re so close to being there. We’re almost  _free, dad._ ” His voice cracks. Cole didn’t know that was possible.

Cole bites back a sob. His lip is bitten into, but there’s still a hiss of sorrow breaking through the tiny gap.

Connor turns to him, then. As if he’s only just remembered that Cole is there.

“Hey, Cole, he always listens to you! Maybe if you tell him to knock it off, he’ll realize it’s not nice to play such horrible jokes. Come on.”

Connor lets a chuckle out. It grates in Cole’s ears, anxiety lacing every little noise from Connor’s mouth.

Cole can’t look at Connor properly. So he doesn’t focus, lets everything blur together into a picture he can’t quite grasp, can’t quite make out. An intangible concept. Just eluding him.

“Connor…” he chokes out. That’s all he can say.

The floodgates break open, and Connor is clutching at him with desperation, holding tightly to his arms and scrambling for his shoulders and pulling him close with a tiny, heart wrenching, “ _We were so close_.”

Cole doesn’t lift his arms, he can’t, not with the gun still in his hands.

Connor’s eyes hide in his neck, tears wetting the fabric of his collar. He shakes, his intakes of air stuttering and painful. Cole can’t do a damn thing.

A ring of red light sears through the darkness of the night, burning into Cole’s optical unit the image of Connor breaking into pieces.

“He can’t be  _gone_ , Cole. It’s  _not true_. It  _can’t_  be true…”

Connor lifts his head a few inches, hovering just enough that his warmth flutters over Cole’s skin, and it’s a horrid reminder of the final moments of Hank’s life.

Cole drops the gun, finally.

It clatters to the floor, a sudden sound tearing through the haze of grief. Connor peers at the weapon, and he finally sees Cole’s hands.

Stained. Tainted. Azure and Cobalt. Thirium.  _Blood_.

Connor pulls away, scrambling back for but a moment.

But then he’s surging forward. Tackling Cole down, pressing his shoulders to the ground.

Cole goes down without a struggle, blinking tears out of his shiny eyes, impassive despite the claws sinking into every wire and tearing them apart. Disconnected one by one.

Connor searches for something in his eyes. He looks like he wants to scream. Cole wants him to scream, to shout profanity after profanity and then tear out his Thirium pump, toss it across the ground, avenging the closest they’ll ever get— _had ever gotten_ —to a father.

Connor doesn’t find what he’s looking for. Could it have been satisfaction? Anger? Cole can’t bring himself to ask. Connor releases his shoulders, pushing off of them to sit back, on his knees, and give a wail of pure agony to the stars, head falling back to his shoulders.

Tears slip rapidly down his cheeks, falling to the floor, occasionally with the sound of a drop colliding with the floor following. Cole feels goosebumps rise on his skin. He didn’t know it could happen. But, like everything else, aesthetic.

Connor’s voice flickers out, chest heaving.

He reaches behind himself, under his coat, and Cole distantly recalls something.

The fact that Connor has a gun.

Connor’s arm brings a handgun up, setting the barrel perpendicular to Cole’s forehead. His hand quivers as Cole closes his eyes.

“ _Please_.”

There’s a pause.

Cole opens his eyes just before Connor pulls the trigger. A gunshot rings out, Cole’s blue orbs shrinking in shock. Thirium splats, dripping down Cole’s face.

“ _I’m sorry._ ”

Cole can hear some other deviants screaming in the distance. Along with some soldiers stomping around nearby.

He sits up, Connor’s body slumping down off of him, laid beside Hank’s.

Cole reaches for the gun, especially as he catches the sound of Perkins muttering into a radio beneath the platform they’re all on.

He holds it to his temple, tears piling and blurring the lower part of his vision. He tilts his head back a little to make sure that Connor’s and Hank’s bodies are distorted by the liquid.

Like this, it almost appears as though his big brother and father are sleeping, LEDs lightless and faces relaxed. Like little more than a few nights ago, when he and Hank had first found Connor, when Hank and Connor both kissed him on the forehead, a farewell into dreamland.

The cold metal pressing against his LED clicks softly as it makes contact with the ring, and Cole shakes his head.

He puts the gun down for a second. He has to do one last thing.

He brings his index fingers, uncaring of their stains, up to the corners of Hank’s lips, and pushes them up, the artificial hairs of his beard and mustache pricking at his fingertips.

He does the same to Connor, then gently shuts their eyelids.

Cole takes a shaky breath. His right hand reaches for the gun, resting on Connor’s stomach, and brings it back up. He smiles, closing his eyes. “I’ll see you soon, Connor, Dad.”

The last remaining sound—a loud  _BANG_ —ring in his audio receptors until they go offline. He’s collapsed on and between the two of his closest family members. He curls his arms around them with the last of his power as his LED flickers and dies.


End file.
